Remarks by President Trump at the 91st Annual Future Farmers of America Convention and Expo | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Then I said, "This side - these great musicians, they would never be that way." And they had the same ambition, right? They rushed the podium. (Applause.) A lot of talent. That's good music, by the way. I heard that backstage. I said, that's good music.

    But my administration is fighting for our farmers every single day. We are replacing unfair trade deals. You have very unfair trade deals, folks. If you look at farming over the last 15 years, it's a steady decline. There's no reason for it. It's not going to be a steady incline. There's no reason for what happened to farmers. Incredible people.

    We're going to be opening new markets for your exports. We're going to be eliminating job-killing regulations, which we've already done in record numbers. (Applause.) No, record numbers. We will be ending oppressive federal intrusion - and you and your families know exactly what that means. We'll be cutting your taxes and, just like I promised, we are ensuring that ethanol will remain a vital part of America's energy future with my - just last week, at the absolute urging of your great Secretary of Agriculture, Mr. Sonny Perdue. (Applause.)

    He knows more about farming - I don't know where is. Where is Sonny Perdue? He knows more about farming than any human being I've ever seen in my life. Where is Sonny? Is he here? Is he backstage? What a great gentleman. And he loves farmers, and he loves farming.

    You know, when I was going to pick the Secretary of Agriculture, I interviewed about seven or eight people, and one was great politically and one was great some other way, and they all had something that was fine, I guess.

    But I kept saying, "What do you know about farming?" "Sir, I know nothing, but I can learn." (Laughter.) And my staff is saying, "Oh, hire him, he's perfect." I said, "But he doesn't know anything." And then another came in and he had some other talent, but farming wasn't one of them. And a third one came in and I said, "Let me ask you..." - this guy really seemed to be a total novice - "Have you ever been to a farm?" "No, sir. But if I get the job, I said the first thing I do is going to visit a farm." (Laughter.) And I think the Future Farmers wouldn't be too happy.


    And then this guy Sonny Perdue walks in. You know, he was the Governor of Georgia for eight years, and very popular. (Applause.) He was the Governor of Georgia, and he was a popular governor. In fact, he would've been there forever, I guess, but he was term-limited, right? It's always nicer than somebody loses. But he was a popular governor - a really popular governor, and a great governor.

    And he walked into my office, and he was there for an hour. I learned more about farming in that one hour than I have in my whole life. And he was not perfect in certain ways. But when farming - it came to farming, he was so good; I've never seen anything like it. Politically speaking, eh. (Laughter.) Farming speaking. But he loves his farmers, and he has done some great job.

    So, Sonny Perdue. Sonny Perdue. Thank you very much. (Applause.) Thank you, Sonny. Thank you. That man knows more about it. Thank you.

    My administration is working very hard to help all of our wonderful farmers in Georgia and the Florida Panhandle impacted by the recent hurricane. We do love that Panhandle. I'll tell you what - that Panhandle got hit hard, and a piece of Georgia got hit. I went there. And I saw farmers who were so incredible. I was with Melania, First Lady. She's doing a great job. (Applause.)

    And we had cotton farmers, and pecan farmers, and timber farmers, and these are beautiful people that were devastated. And a cotton farmer was standing in line - there must have been 40 farmers, all of them really badly hurt. Some devastated. Some wiped out. And he said, "Sir, I've been doing and growing cotton for 25 years." And he was crying. He said, "This was the best crop I've ever grown. This was the finest..." He was explaining to me about cotton. I don't know too much about Cotton, other than I want to grow a lot of it in this country. But he was explaining how, "Sir, this was the..." And he's going like this. I mean, he said it's the best crop he ever had. "And then in five hours, sir, I had nothing. I was wiped out."

    And I said to our man, Sonny Perdue, "Sonny, we help so many people, but we don't help our people. We don't help them like we should. We got to help these people." He was wiped out. He wasn't asking for anything. He wasn't even thinking about it. And he got wiped out. And they had a rough season, as you know, last year, with a much smaller level of storm, but still, a rough season.

    And I said, "Sonny, we got to help these people out." And that's what we're going to be doing. Because we help people out, and we help countries out that don't even appreciate it. We give billions and billions of dollars all over the world. We protect countries with our military; they don't pay us. We do so much for so many. And here we have a cotton farmer who works his ass off his whole life. (Applause.) And I send checks for billions of dollars - don't worry, a lot of it is going to be - is being cut back. You'll hear about it when you see all these protests from people.

    And we give billions of dollars to places, and they don't even vote for us at the United Nations. It's unbelievable. They vote against us on things that are very popular. They vote against us. It's called no respect. But they do vote now that I'm President. They have been voting very nicely. Thank you. (Applause.) Unfortunately. I wish they would keep not voting for us, okay?

    But I said, "Sonny, these people in the Panhandle, Florida, and Georgia, and Alabama..." And you're not talking about - and, by the way, how about North Carolina, South Carolina? They got hit. They got a big water duster. That was a bad one. So you had two opposites. Here you had massive water, North and South Carolina. Massive water. And then we get it from the other side, with essentially a tornado. That was massively wide. That was the world's biggest tornado. I've never seen anything like it. You go down to the shore; we saw houses where the foundations were actually ripped out of the ground. I mean, there was nothing. But the foundations were gone. They weren't even left. It was total devastation.

    And I said, "We have to help these farmers. Their crops have been destroyed." Some of them, the pecans - does anybody grow pecans? (Applause.) Okay? So we had pecan farmers, where - I learned so much about this that day - you'll have trees and it takes four years before they start, it take eight years before you can - and 10 years before they really become productive. You had massive pecan farms where there wasn't one tree standing. Because they're not supposed to be hit by hurricanes.

    Palm trees are hit by hurricanes. With them, it's like ho-hum. You ever see, everything is gone except the palm trees. (Laughter.) Because they've been hit by hurricanes for 2 million years, and they see a hurricane coming, and they just go poom-boom. (Laughter.) You ever see it? Boom-bomp. You can't knock those suckers over. And you ever see where we come down - and I see it in Palm Beach, Florida, and Miami, where I have a lot of stuff. I put certain trees - beautiful; they're beautiful. Then we get hit by a big storm, or even a small hurricane, and everything is gone. I said, what happened to all that beautiful? It's not acclimated. It wasn't meant. Looks pretty. But every time you have a storm, you might as well forget it. But every palm tree is standing. There's nothing you can do to those suckers.

    And that's life. That's sort of, in a way, when you think of it, that's what you do. But I said to Sonny Perdue, I said, "Sonny, you are authorized to work with these farmers to get them back and help them." And you know, we're talking about a lot of money, but we're talking about peanuts - peanuts - compared to what we give to the world, and the peanut industry, right? That's right. (Applause.) Jimmy Carter - the peanut industry. (Applause.) Who, by the way, is a very nice man. He's in the peanut - he was a peanut farmer, right?

    But I learned a lot about it, and I said, let's help them out. And we're going to help them out. So those farmers that I met, we're going to be helping you out. Shockingly, we're going to be helping you out. And it's going to be my honor to do it.


    And you know the interesting thing with farmers? I've had many meetings with farmers in my office. When things have been - they don't want help. They just want to be able to do their thing. Others are always asking for, "Give us money. We want..." They don't want help. I could tell you stories where I offered things. They said, "Sir, that's not what we want. That's not what we're about." I said, I can't believe it, it's the first time I ever heard that. The first time I've ever heard it.

    So we're going to help out those folks that I met, and others in Florida and in Georgia, and in a little section of Alabama that got hit very hard, and in South Carolina and in North Carolina. We're going to help those people out. We're going to really do everything we can to help them out. (Applause.)

    So I want to thank two very special people that have been unbelievably helpful to me as President. You know, we cut your taxes. We got rid of regulations. We're building up our military to a level that is higher than it's ever been. And everything is being built in the USA, right? (Applause.) Our military. And in these times especially, when you see horrible things happen, we have to have a strong military. And the stronger it is, the less likely that we'll have to use it, right? You understand what that means, I think. You folks understand. The stronger we are, the less likely we have to use it.

    But two congressman that have been incredible - they have been leaders, they have been strong. They're from, essentially, around the area. They love the farm business. They respect farmers, like I do. I want to introduce Congressman Jim Banks and Congressman Trey Hollingsworth for being here today. I don't know where they are. There they are. Thank you. (Applause.) Come here for a second. Come. These guys fight for the farmers. I think they like their farmers. (Applause.) Come here. Say a couple of words. Do you like farmers? Huh? Just say a couple of words.

    REPRESENTATIVE BANKS: How we doing? (Applause.) Isn't it great to have this President who cares about farmers, about agriculture - the future of what you all stand right here in Indiana, at your convention? How great is that? (Applause.)

    Serving in this Congress, with this President, is the honor of my life. We've made a big difference for this country by rebuilding the military, growing a strong economy, serving our veterans better than they've ever been served before. And it's all because of this man right here. (Applause.) Thank you very much, Mr. President.

    REPRESENTATIVE HOLLINGSWORTH: Wow. Where are the Hoosiers in the house? (Applause.) I'm so excited to be here, and I'm so excited to work alongside the administration every single day to build a brighter, stronger, better future for America. And that is what this President has been about from day one, all the way through to today. (Applause.)

    I know that there were some dark times, that we felt like America had once lost its way. But today we can reassuredly tell the American people that the future will be brighter, and this century will be another American century for American producers, American manufacturers, and most importantly, American farmers. (Applause.)

    THE PRESIDENT: Please get out and vote for them. And I'm going to be very nice. I'm not even going to mention their opponents. I won't tell you that they're aligned with Nancy Pelosi. So I'm going to be nice. Get out and vote for those two guys that are with you 100 percent.

    I'd like to extend my very special thanks to FFA President Bre Holbert. Bre. (Applause.) Thank you. Thank you. What a job. What a job. Thank you, Bre. Board Chairman -

    AUDIENCE MEMBER: I love you, Bre!

    THE PRESIDENT: Somebody said, "I love you, Bre." Did you hear that? (Applause.) I love you too, Bre!

    Board Chairman, Dr. Steve Brown. (Applause.) Steve. Thank you, Steve. Great job, Steve. CEO Mark Peshill. (Applause.) Thank you, Mark. Good job. Thank you. FFA Foundation President Molly Ball. (Applause.) Thanks, Molly. Great job. And all of the outstanding teachers who pour out their heart and soul to make FFA such a tremendous organization. Look what they've done today. Look at this. (Applause.) Great job. Great job.

    No one embodies the American spirit like the members of the FFA and, frankly, all of the people that are in this room with us today. And our nation, if you know, was founded by farmers. In fact, if you look - chain of command - if you look, President, Vice President - I don't know exactly where the Secretary of Agriculture is, but it's right up there at the top, because we really were about farming, and we still are about farming. And nobody does it even close to better. So it's a tremendous honor to be here.

    Our independence was won by farmers. Our frontier was settled by farmers. And, every day, our people are fed, clothed and sustained by American farmers. (Applause.)

    Somebody just said, your hair looks different today. I said, well, I was standing under the wing of Air Force One doing a news conference early this morning - a very unfortunate news conference. And the wind was blowing, and the rain - and I was soaking wet. And that's what I ended up with today. (Laughter.) And I said, well, at least you know it's mine. (Laughter.) I said, maybe I should cancel this arrangement because I have a bad hair day.

    AUDIENCE: No!


    THE PRESIDENT: And the bad news - somebody said, actually, it looks better than it usually does. (Laughter.) That's in a response to a little (inaudible).

    Before I took office, our incredible farmers were being crushed by an onslaught of massive taxes, crippling regulations, burdensome federal mandates, and unfair one-sided, bad trade deals.

    But those days are over. (Applause.) Now you have a President who is fighting for you. We're fighting now for the farmer. We don't worry too much about the globalists. We want to take care of the globe too, but we have to take care of ourself before we start worrying about others. (Applause.)